What's the worst job you've ever done?

[Longpot]

OK - I don't want to hear how people had to sell their bodies to get subscription fees for WoW, just interested to know what jobs people have done in the past...

When I was a student I used to work at a pharmaceutical company in the holidays and one time made the mistake of asking if there was anything they wanted done when I found myself at a loose end... :rolleyes:

Result: I was led right into the centre of the complex to this room that looked like it hadn't been opened in years, the guy shoved the door open to reveal what can only be described as a drug dumping site - there were broken bottles half full of unknown liquids; crushed tablets that left a powdery coating everywhere; bottles with labels that had been turned black from the air, or in some cases completed eroded; not to mention the smell (like a mix between a few hundred bottles of open nail polish and a 3 week old cadaver)... you get the picture...

My job was to 'catalogue' the entire room - in hindsight I should have been issued with a biohazard lvl 5 suit complete with positive pressure hepa-filter... but no it was just me and my lab coat :shocked:

What's your worst work experience?

[rgirty]

When I was putting myself through college I worked a 7pm to 7am shift at a toilet paper manufacturing facility. I won't get into details but it changed my whole outlook on things.

[Scrapples]

My worst job was when I was working part time for a rubber making company, I would Mix and mold and even color the rubber which pretty tough hot hot work carrying the bags of mix from the trucks. Then only to find out I was making Rubber dildo’s errm……8.55 was not worth the hassle. And I was only 18 at the time.

[Elly]

Washing up dishes (by hand no less, shock horror!) when I was 15 at weekends in a nightclub that had a restaurant called The Gardens in Yeovil, Somerset.

It actually wasn't a worst experience really. It was tiring but I got to have my own money and save for things and it certainly taught me the value of money and how to budget so I guess I'm talking complete tosh, it was actually a good experience:)

The worst job in terms of being miserable was actually charity work I did in Indonesia teaching at a blind school. It was rewarding in as much as it made me feel good that I was doing my bit to help but ultimately I ended up feeling like a spoilt western pig by comparison.

[Longpot]

lol @ paper and dildo manufacturing - when you said 'rubber' I thought you meant contraceptives :grin:

Elly - those aren't what I'd call 'bad jobs' although I get ur point re: Indonesia.

Keep 'em coming people these make me laugh :grin:

P.S. One of my friends once worked in a carrot factory and had to stand with a pallet beneath this massive hole where all the carrots dropped from - his job was to stand there until he'd 'caught' a full tray off carrots, then carry it off and come back for more. Never thought the phrase 'carrot cut' existed til I met him :grin: :grin:

[CreslinHellscream]

I also did dish washing for a few years while I was in school - Its soul destroying after awhile. Also working in any food factory is pretty dire.

[Jagzmtg]

My junior year of high school, I ended up as one of the people at the entrance to Six Flags that tries to stop people to get a picture. That was the worst summer of my life, no question about it.

[rgirty]

Actually the toilet paper thing wasn't the worst.

I did some landscaping while in college for a hospital.

It seemed the hospital had built this huge expensive fence with a narrow opening. Too narrow for any large equipment. However they discovered that the ground in this area actually needed to be 6 inches higher and level.

So, it was the duty of myself and one other lucky soul to bring in the dirt via wheelbarrow shovel it out then spread it around.

Do you know how much dirt it takes to raise a 50x30 foot area 6 inches? Neither do I, because I quit after the 2nd day. It was 100+ degrees outside and for 30$ a day after taxes it wasn't worth it.


I worked at taco bell during college too. I did so many dishes they just called me pots after a while. I would work 8 hours straight just washing dishes. I really got to where I rather enjoyed it, no one else wanted to do it so no one really bothered me. No one ever complained at me or anything really....so it wasn't as bad as the toilet paper thing.

[SpiritWalker]

*Mind blocks attempt to type out event..*

I'm sorry :undecided:

[Scrapples]

So besides working at the *rubber* factory which lasted 1month ? I also had other jobs that were not so great.

Well taking the off the following year to go backpacking threw Spain/Greece I got a job working as a tour guild on the island of Corsica I hope I spelt that right. I would single handedly cook for 40-50ppl then take them on a boring but beautiful 3 hour tour of the island. This would happen 2-3 times a day.

Worked a large grocery chain as Meat sales associate haha I got this job 2-3weeks after I got back to the states. My shift was fri-sun 4pm-11pm so my weekends were shot. I had cut, inventory, serve complaining customers all day and finally at the end of the day I would have to clean a 30foot meat showing case which smelled like a rotten corpse that’s been laying around for awhile.

This would take forever and would get me soaken wet from the hose which sprayed erratically… when I would be finished I would have to call the night manager to come inspect my work (washing meat trays utensil’s lonnnng ass meat counter). This women would always find something wrong and would end up making me clean it again. I plotted this women’s demise daily… I let go after 2months of 6.50/hr

Then finally the last job before I finished college and things started looking up. I seen ad in the news paper stating Great pay! Fun work! Work with your friends! I was thinking score! So I called they set up the interview and I was hired right away! 10.00/hr. I found my self standing in the middle of a busy intersection holding up a sign for 6hours saying mattress sale! I didn’t last 2day’s

Then finally I graduated from my four year degree and was hired! Not 4 weeks after, working for a great company with great pay and benefits….then I got married…………………

[Scrapples]

Sorry typo's I know forgive me, was thinking back on those grand day's and typing at the same time.

[snowieken]

I once worked for a week in a factory which made little plastic yoghurt bottles. My job was to stand near the machine where all these little flasks came out on a conveyor belt and take out the spotted and dented ones, 8 hours in a row with half an hour break. There wasn't a chair I could sit on, even though I was basically standing on the same exact spot the entire day. Imagine, you're standing there, millions of yoghurt bottles are passing you, every 10 minutes or so there's a bad one so you get some activity (which turned out to be very exciting in the end - "Oh, look, look, there's a dirty one, there's a dirty one... Ey, I saw it first! Hands off, that one's mine!") and on top of all that there was this huge clock hanging on the wall in front of me. Right in front of my nose, it was very hard to miss. Everytime I thought at least half an hour had passed I glanced upon it and noticed that it was about 2 or 3 minutes later than the last time I thought that.

Worst job experience of my life.

[Bryant]

Ohhh, staring at a clock is the worst torture you could have while working or in school.

Im only 16 (Birthday tommorow, though. Yay! But I wont be near a computer for 10 days =( ), so I havn't really had any job experience. One job I had was an intern working for the city I live in. I worked on phones with a hippy all day, and they tried to teach my stuff I really didn't care about.

The very first day I worked there, though, they stuck me with the job noone wanted to do. (I was only 16 at the time, surrounded by people who were 30 and older) I worked in the Telecommunications Dept., which is just a fancy way to say 'the phone guy'. They shoved me a room full of phones. Boxes on top of boxes of phones, most were laying on the floor in piles, and you could barely walk in. The guy showed me how to tell what kind of phones they were, and then he goes "Now categorize them."

I think the worst part was I had to work with a trustie (Someone still in jail, but doing work during the day.). They gave him a knife to cut the boxes open because he had to help me. Probably the scariest day of my life, and he started rapping about killing people while he cut the boxes open. The guy looked like he was probably 19 or 20.

Paid great for being 15, though. 8.12 an hour. That was about 550 every two weeks. Only worked for a month because school started.

[CreslinHellscream]

I hear ya snowie, Readybase Cake Bases, middle of summer, 3 weeks of hell. Standing on a conveyor belt making the bases for cheesecakes and biscuits. Always some muppet supervisors standing over your shoulder, dare you breathe a word to someone and they're there saying shut up and work. You didnt get no water breaks or anything so you where just stood there for about 2-3 hours in the sweltering heat, probably loosing body fluids at a litre every 15mins, until you where finally allowed out for a 10 min break. Yeah worst job ever for me, £3.50 an hour, I lasted 3 weeks.

[Longpot]

LOOOL - These are really great guys :grin:

1. Jagzmtg - What is Six Flags?

2. Rgirty - I know how much dirt is contained in a small flower bed that I helped a friend 'level' - about 10 times more than you think. You'd prob still be there now if you hadn't quit (that one and the yoghurt bottles should be advertised as "never-ending role" :grin: )

3. Cleaing out a 30ft meat case - OMFG :shocked:

4. Bryant dood, your's should be under most 'dangerous job you've ever done' - can't say I'd hang around too long under those circumstances...

Keep 'em coming :grin:

[Jagzmtg]

Six Flags is a company that has numerous amusement parks located around the United States, and perhaps other countries, though I don't really know.

What made the job even worse than simply having to ask people to stop for a picture, and repeatedly getting ignored and insulted, was the fact that they played the theme songs to about 5 Warner Bros. shows on a continuous loop, ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

Plus it was just creepy when I'd ask a family to stop for a picture and the mom/grandma would say no thanks, but she'd like a picture of me. :scared:

[Trepidation]

All those bad jobs are not the worst...they are the best. Because they sure has hell get your arse in gear to get your 4 yeard degree and get a job which doesn't such so bad :)

-tReP

[Longpot]

True - they are 'learning experiences' - but always funny to hear about :grin:

Asking people to stop for a picture is pretty embarassing though - esecially if you're being blanked all the time. Jo Public can be v cruel at times...

[Scrapples]

Yea when I think back I laugh, but when I was working the jobs it was terrible. I have to admit Longpot your worst job was harilous, no way I would have stuck around to clean catalog what have you.

[Thanhert]

I used to work for a crab shack. The job was actually kinda fun but had it's moments.

Being from Maryland, crabs are a major resource and are quite the commodity. Only downside is they are only truly inseason during the summer months of June, July, and August. I would grade (determine the size) of roughly 5000 live crabs per day and sort them by hand into baskets to be cooked. Once all the crabs were nicely sorted I got to carry them into the shop and steam them in huge steam pots. Huge steam pots indoors in mid-July/August is almost unbearable. Once the crabs are done I pulled them out by hand into crates to be stored for when customers order them. In order to pull the last crabs out of the pot I have to lean into the pots to grab them which made the heat (not only from the weather but from the inside of the pot) worse.

Every once in a while we'd get a bad shipment of crabs and I'd be knee deep in dead crabs. That smell just gets worse as the day goes on, not to mention the smell from the dumpster that held all the dead crabs for the week because trash only got picked up weekly. Add on to that 6 electrocutions from the "Shocker" (water filled trash can with an extension cord running into the water which charges the water, when the lid is closed it pushes the switch, and shocks the crabs so they don't pull off each others' claws during the steaming) when the switch would get stuck in the on position even after you life the lid and I reach in to get the crabs out ... Good job.

[Longpot]

OMFG :shocked: - I think we have a winner... :grin:

[Thanhert]

Oh, I forgot to add something that I tend to overlook because ... well ... it's fairly obvious, the crabs are biting the **** out of your fingers while you are grading them. Sure the experienced graders don't get bit as much but with experience comes speed and with speed comes carelessness. A couple neat tidbits about crab claws. 1) The smaller the crab, the worse it hurts when they pinch. Think I am crazy? The small crabs have fresh claws which means the points are razor sharp. They may not have as much power, but frankly they don't need it when the claw goes straight through the bottom of your thumb and stops at the bottom of your nail. The big crabs have had their claws worn to smooth nubs by all the salt water and silt. Don't get me wrong, the big ones hurt, but more in a crushing sort of way as opposed to a stabbing. 2) When being pinched by a crab most people's first reaction is to shake that ***** off. This is probably the worst thing you can do. When a crab's claw detaches from the body the meat in the claw constricts causing both pinchers of the claw to cross paths so to speak. Like when you used to force a pair of scissors to cross in 1st grade by pulling hard on the handles like a wishbone. Well when your finger is in the middle of those claws crossing it is a new kind of hurt.

I worked at the crab house for 3 years during highschool and in that time I had close to 20 infections in my fingers from mixing cuts from pinches with dead crabs, live crabs, other seafood, etc. 3 of those infections I got treated for (the first one and 2 others that I couldn't treat on my own). Cortezone shots to the finger ftw!

[Longpot]

ROFLMFAO :grin:

Thanhert you deserve a medal dood, I've heard of some bad jobs but this takes the biscuit (the whole pack) :grin:

[D.K.night]

This doesn't even begin to measure up to Thanhert's but for what it's worth...

I once worked for Burger King as a regular staff member, flipping burgers. Well actually I didn't actually "flip" any patties - it was a funny conveyer belt system where you plop the frozen patties down at the beginning of the belt, it would move the patties along through where, towards the middle of the conveyer belt the patty would be bbq'ed from the flames inside. It then reaches the end of the belt, where the sandwich person would grab the patty and then "dress" it on the bun. It would seem an easy and consistent method of cooking the patties, with the hardest part really just cracking the frozen patties apart from each other, out of the mini-freezer.

Except that the conveyer belt moved slow. Dog painfully slow. And today I realize it had to be - in order to ensure the meat was cooked throughly. But at lunchtimes, we would get slammed with customers. Sometimes things would get so hectic that the clear bottleneck to our production burger-making speed was tied directly to the speed(lack thereof) of the conveyer belt. There was no way to speed it up. One lunch hour I was getting desperate to pump the patties out quicker. So you know what I did? I can already hear some of you gasp in realization. Yes, that's right.

I frisbee'd the patties deep into conveyer belt fires. They appeared at the end of the conveyer belt line in about a fraction of time it normally would have.

I think I might have been single-handledly responsible for all kinds of customer food poisoning at that joint.

[Scrapples]

Yeah I use to work at from 5am-2pm making nothing but sizzle breakfast burgers at WaWa a major/gas/food spot in the eastern US.

From the time I arrived, to the time I left was nothing but making them and trying to keep up with the demand/special orders. The special orders is where I learned to hate the elderly.

I would throw the bread meat egg cheese on these sheets and stick it in this heavy dutie mircowave/oven for five minutes. I would then take them out and scourge my fingers trying to put them together and wrap em.

So well I was waiting for them to cook, I would make coffee. Make hot dog's and Salt pretzel which turned out to be Snow covered by the salt from my fustrations!

I would seriouly have to guess that I made 1000's! of these evil break burgers a day and more than half were thrown out.

Thanks D.K Knight for refreshing my memeory. :D

[D.K.night]

Ah memories memories eh, Scrapples?

A few years after my Burger King stint I went to work for a restaurant near an amusement park and stadium. It's been long out of business, due to a poor location and the fact business was only big when there was a game playing at the stadium, or when the exhibition fair was happening. As a busboy, I endured all kinds of verbal abuse and belittlement from the waiters and waitresses. However I forged on, needing cash to fuel my video game addiction.

However one evening I was particularly in a foul mood. I had to close the restaurant, and fumed about all the other "cool" staff(who were all buddy-buddy with each other but me) sitting on their ass smoking whilst I had a billion tables still to clear and reset, and I had no help. I stormed my way upstairs, looked around to make sure no one was looking, pulled my zipper down, and urinated all over the carpet.

No I was never caught. The restaurant didn't remain in business for much longer afterward.

[rgirty]

I know what you guys mean by the burger stories. I used to work at mcdonalds and we had 25 cent no limit cheeseburger night.

Yes, you read that correctly. You could get 100 cheeseburgers for $25 dollars.
You know what? That is exactly what people did. We had all kinds of people driving through ordering 50-100 burgers.

You think to yourself, why would someone order 50 burgers? well it only totalled 12.50 if they were poor they could basically live for days on 12$.

Growing up i lived on a hunting dog/gamecock farm. I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with cock fighting? Bringing water to 5-600 hostile chickens not to mention the hours of shoveling dog poo wasn't much fun either. but that was life as a youngster, not a job so to speak just what i did as an adolescent before I graduated to mcdonalds and the toilet paper place.

I have a good job now, no more of that kind of thing. The odd part about it is, where I work we have someone who stands in one spot, all day.... looking for dented/dirty deformed plastic bottles.

Go figure.

[Javal]

I worked in a sheep skin factory once. The sheep skins would come in a truck straight off the sheep. We would scrape the excess meat from the hide, strech the hides out and salt them down. After they had dried out we would bunch them all up on pallets and ship them out. Now I grew up in the midwest farmlands but I just could not stand this for more than a few days.

[Scrapples]

Yeah.. that doesn't sound to good. Javal.

I'm intrested in what kind of work everyone does now. I mean after all the crazy jobs we worked. Of course I have many other jobs I havent posted but not all were bad.

Currently work for Cable company which is pretty infulental in the united states. Great job, great pay. And hell of lot better than What I was doing.

[Longpot]

lol - these are all funny (If not a little disturbing in DKs case! :shocked: )

[Longpot]

Oh - and I work for a Telecoms Billing Co. in the UK - Very happy with my lot atm :smiley:

[D.K.night]

I work for a telecom firm as a sys admin.

[Thanhert]

I work on a contract with the US Govt as a Systems Analyst and Oracle DBA. Far cry from the crab shack :P

[rgirty]

I'm a director level executive for a large umbrella company that owns several food manufacturing plants as well as a few television stations.

Far cry from burger flipping and toilet paper making.